SEO Tips: How To Protect Your Site From Negative SEO

With more than 80 percent share in the search engine market, Google is a force to reckon with in the industry. Internet marketers are tuned into each and every one of its moves. SEO tips speak about what Google does and how to reach the top spot.

Google keeps making changes to its algorithm in an endeavor to provide high quality search results to its users. Right now it is on a mission to combat web-spam.

Unethical practices in business continue as long as there are unscrupulous people in the world. It is always advisable to be on guard. Negative SEO is one such unethical and shameful practice that can have a huge negative impact on your online presence.

Simple put, negative SEO is the reverse of search engine optimization. The aim of negative SEO is to downgrade a website or blog on the search results. It can be accomplished by practices like link dropping, flooding a large quantity of links to the site and unauthorized 301 directs.

Here are a few tips on how to protect your website from negative SEO.

It is very important to monitor the performance of your website regularly (preferably daily). Analytics tools like Google Analytics help you immensely in this. Watch for sudden drop in traffic. It is a sure sign that something is wrong.

Check for decrease in conversions. Increase in bounce rate also calls for further investigation. Google webmaster tools allow you to set up email alerts. You will get emails when you have messages. You may set up for daily, monthly or yearly alerts.

Browse the site periodically. You may do it yourself or have someone do it for you. Check the search engine ranking for various keywords periodically. It is almost impossible to prevent sites from linking into your website. However it is definitely possible to track your links. People intending to harm your site usually use bad links.

Many link management tools like Ahrefs.com and Majestic SEO are available online. You need to be aware of the total number of links and root domains. If you notice major changes, you need to investigate further. It is also important to check backlinks positioning. Watch out for 301 redirects. Ahrefs.com definitely helps you in this endeavor.

Download the list of referring sites in your analytics package. You need to get this information for the last two months and for the last month. Remove the sites that are appearing twice. You are left with the new referring domains. You need to be thorough in your investigation at this stage. Watch for oddities. Remove low quality backlinks.

The best way to combat negative SEO is to build a site that is untouchable. It is always advisable to focus on building relationships instead of just focusing too much on ranking first for a specific keyword. Having said that keyword research is important, but it should be natural. Ensure that you have a well-developed backlink profile.

By following the above-mentioned guidelines, you will be able to combat negative SEO effectively.